BOOM! : Pale Rivers ‘Don’t Worry About Me’

Fans of The National and LCD Soundsystem will definitely enjoy the new single from Irish post-punk group Pale Rivers titled ‘Don’t Worry About Me’. The stirring track is part of their upcoming EP, to be released May 18th, and sees the five-piece blending electronics, synths, and rock instrumentation. The band have supported the likes ofTeleman, British Sea Power and The Wedding Present and have worked with producer Gavin Glass and mixing engineer Kieran Lynch (U2, R.E.M, Elvis Costello).

We caught up with Pale Rivers to talk about their new single and EP.

Could you introduce yourselves?

We’re Pale Rivers, we’re from Ireland and we make a blend of alternative/rock/pop music.

We’ve just spent the last 6 months working with two producers/friends of ours on new music which we are very much excited to get out there over the coming months.

Who are some of your biggest influences?

That’s a tough one, I think across the five of us there’s a pretty big range of influences and interests…

I can’t speak for everyone, but for me personally, growing up I really loved the likes of Tom Waits, Bowie, LCD Soundsystem, The Strokes and Prince. I don’t think, listening to us as a band, that one would immediately hear that in what we do as a group, but it definitely shaped the way I approach writing music and take it in too.

Could you talk about your new EP? How was the writing and recording process?

Recording it has definitely been one of the coolest and most formative experiences that we’ve had so far in that regard. The two producers that we worked with, Owen and Steve are both Nashville based so they would sporadically travel over here and we’d spend a week here and there at a couple studio’s. It was a very collaborative effort between both the band and the two guys. I think that’s what made it so enjoyable, everyone contributing different idea’s, no one was really sitting back not doing anything at any one point, if guitar’s were on in one room, then synths were set up in the next and we’d transfer them over as we went. There was also a lot of improv takes too towards the end, just to experiment with sounds and a lot of that made the cut which is cool.

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What was the inspiration behind ‘Don’t Worry About Me’? What does the track mean to you?

We really wanted that song to sound like a machine that’s slowly breaking down from start to finish. The idea was to have these very mechanical rhythms and then to kind of marry these crazy dark sounds to some super melodic parts against a weird set of chords and see if they could all somewhat co-exist together in peace…

In terms of meaning, I know what it means to me, and the thought process that was going on when we wrote it. But I also think once something is out there it’s important to let it go a little bit and let people make of it what they will. That’s one of the most exciting parts of music to me really, that it can be interpreted so many different ways.

How have your recent shows been going?

Show’s on this run have been going really well so far. There’s a good portion of songs on the set that we’re playing live for the first time so that’s always exciting…

On this current run we’re doing a split tour with The Shaker Hymn around Ireland which has been cool. It’s nice to be doing a set of dates split with a band that we’re friends with anyway, everything flows little easier when everyone is already somewhat in the know of each other. Good times all round.